Commencement of the 2024 Summer Olympics has excited everybody including all those at International Space Station (ISS) who happen to be six in number and they are NASA astronauts who celebrated the beginning of the games in Paris and other locations in France by organizing their own mini-Olympics.
On July 26, Nasa released a two-minute video showing some funny activities of the astronauts. The video opens with a crew member passing a fake Olympic flame from Jeanette Epps to Butch Wilmore finally at the station’s Cupola where Earth is visible behind them.
The next thing is that these astronauts prepare for their events whereby Epps and Williams limber up their arms, Wilmore stretches his upper body and drinks floating water globule for hydration.
Barratt throws a make-believe discus as Wilmore shotputs duct tape ball. On the other hand, gymnastics are performed by Williams and Matthew Dominick while Epps runs her way through an ISS corridor. Caldwell Dyson demonstrates strength lifting a bar held by Barratt and Wilmore.
Though it was fun for these guys, they summed up their mini-Olympics with an emotional message to athletes participating in the 23rd Olympiad.
While surrounded by fellow NASA astronauts, such as Matthew Dominick also from NASA, expressed his love for pretending to be Olympic athletes which he said had been made more challenging due to earth’s gravity.
On behalf of ISS crew Dominick wished “godspeed” to all athletes. “We’ve had an absolute blast pretending to be Olympic athletes over the past few days on board of this space lab,” added Matthew Dominick.
“Weightlessness has its perks too,” he chimed in. “We can hardly imagine how tough it must be for you guys; I mean being such world-class sportsmen doing your trades under normal gravity conditions. So godspeed from us up here on ISS to each single athlete competing at the Olympic Games.”
Besides the six NASA astronauts, there are currently three Russian cosmonauts on board ISS including Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenken and Oleg Kononenko who is the commander of the ongoing Expedition 71 mission.
The majority of crew members, as per standard, serve a 6-month ISS mission except Williams and Wilmore who arrived in Boeing’s new Starliner capsule on June 6 for an intended week-long stay.
However, their stay in space has been prolonged because engineers have to investigate issues with thrusters and helium leaks aboard this spacecraft; NASA and Boeing have not established when Starliner will leave.
